01.10.17
Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 9:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Ebbing away from the market…
Summary: The demise of patent trolls in the United States, a trend partly attributable to Alice and other Supreme Court decisions, will likely accelerate soon (later this year) as the future of the Eastern District of Texas courts is at stake
THE US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is doing some fine job in the area of patents. We hope that Justice nominations by Trump won’t ruin it all.
On December 6th the EFF’s Daniel Nazer said that “Supreme Court Curb[ed] Excessive Design Patent Damages” and a week later, on December 14th, his colleague Vera Ranieri said that the “Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case that Could End Texas’ Grip on Patent Cases”. We wrote several articles about that before. This is very big news and the decision can be historic. In an IDG article by Evan Schuman it said:
For years, patent trolls have been the best evidence that pure evil exists. And like most evil entities, they are almost impossible to stop. Even a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision that was highly critical of patent trolls has done little to slow their slimy, reptilian-like existence. But a federal judge on Dec. 19 crafted a novel tactic to curb patent trolls when she slapped a half-million-dollar bill on the lawyers and said that they were personally responsible for paying it, not their client. This could truly be a game-changer.
This is well overdue, as it will help real companies in the US. Patent trolls contribute nothing to the economy or to competitiveness.
In past years we wrote about all sorts of patent trolls and abusers, including Garfum last year (more than once). The EFF posted an update about this serial abuser, which is politely called just a “Patent Bully”:
District Court Undoes Fee Award Against Patent Bully
A district court judge has issued a disappointing ruling reversing an earlier decision to require an abusive patent litigant to pay an EFF client’s attorney’s fees. Judge Jerome Simandle of the District Court of New Jersey held that, even thought the patent was invalid, the relevant law was too uncertain to find the case exceptional and award fees.
This case began in late 2014 when Garfum.com Corporation sued a small photography website called Bytephoto.com for patent infringement. Garfum claimed to own the idea of having a ‘vote for the best’ competition, but on the Internet. The case had a lot of problems. For one thing, Garfum had filed for its patent in 2007 but Bytephoto had been running online photo competitions since 2003. Also, its absurd patent, U.S. Patent No. 8,209,618, was plainly invalid under the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank, which holds that abstract ideas do not become patent eligible simply by being implemented on a generic computer or on the Internet.
As the above update serves to reveal, Alice among other factors already contribute to the demise of some abusive activity. Suffice to say, to trolls-funded sites such as IAM ‘magazine’ this is terrible news to be protested rather than celebrated. Only last night, for instance, IAM was again grooming the world’s latest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, as it did several times before.
To quote this new propagandistic masterpiece:
Two of the biggest names in the IP market have joined forces. Intellectual Ventures co-founder and former VP of patent licensing, strategy and litigation at Intel, Peter Detkin, has today become a senior adviser at Sherpa Technology Group, the strategic IP consultancy among whose managing partners is Rembrandts in the Attic author Kevin Rivette. Sherpa was previously known as 3LP Advisors.
Calling them “biggest names in the IP market” is like calling ISIS and Al-Shabaab “biggest names in the political market.” Then again, when you speak for the patent microcosm — much like the media industry that speaks for the military-industrial complex — war-makers are framed as heroes and champions. █
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Posted in America, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Patents, Samsung at 8:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
When so-called ‘cross-licensing’ with patent purchases (the latest Microsoft method) is actually a disguise/cover for patent settlement after extortion [1, 2, 3, 4]
Summary: The patent lust at IBM, which is suing if not just shaking down companies using software patents, earns plenty of puff pieces from the corporate media
THE notion that the greater the number of patents, the better — a notion so ludicrous that also fails to recognise the raison d’être of patents — is quite a disease. Some people would have us believe that because China created a patents production line in SIPO it's actually at a position of advantage. It’s false and it’s rather infantile to repeat such claims.
One new article, seemingly from an author who is not a fan of software patents (see the short part about it), says today that:
The best ratios I found (i.e., most patents per person) were in very rich Bedford, adjoining Manchester, and almost-as-rich Hollis, adjoining Nashua. Each town had slightly more than 2.7 patents per 1,000 people.
[...]
So keep that in mind when you hear people pointing to patent numbers as a reflection of the braininess of a community, state or country or a company or industry. Take it with a grain of salt.
It’s often just a reflection of which companies are based around that area. But some towns take it out of context and equate patents with innovation or wisdom. The above article came just shortly after a heap of IBM puff pieces. IBM, as our readers are probably aware of by now, bets its future and the whole farm — so to speak — on being more like a patent troll (patent enforcement and shakedown). It has already done that to Twitter, a much smaller company, and it keeps doing that to other Internet companies. “IBM scores a record 8,000 patents in 2016,” enthusiastically screams this headline from Dean Takahashi (or his editor), who just repeated the ‘official’ story as follows:
IBM has proven it is once again dominant in earning patents, as it closed the year with 8,088 U.S. patents granted to its investors in 2016. That’s the 24th consecutive year that the company has earned the most patents of any company.
The second-ranked company, Samsung, had 5,518 U.S. patents granted. About 2,700 of IBM’s 2016 patents covered inventions related to artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, and cloud computing. The patents covered a diverse range of technologies that also included cybersecurity and cognitive health.
We have compiled a list of nearly 20 ‘news’ articles [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17] about IBM claiming 8,000 so-called ‘inventions’ in a single year. Almost all these articles are from yesterday and they add no new information; they’re puff pieces void of any analysis. IBM got many of these patents probably by just calling old stuff “cloud” and “AI” (buzzwords). Is “AI” the new “on a machine”? And “cloud” the new “over the Internet”? When it comes to bamboozling patent examiners (so as to be granted software patents) there are all sorts of tricks, many of which boil down to semantics. IBM is nowadays firing a lot of employees, selling large portions of its physical products divisions to China (notably Lenovo). Is this the future of IBM then? Just ‘hiring’ patents, which it already uses to attack and extort far smaller companies? “Samsung Second & Google Fifth In 2016 Patent Race”, an Android news site said yesterday, so IBM isn’t alone among Linux-oriented firms when it comes to the patents gold rush. Samsung and Google, however, are not patent aggressors. Unlike the above IBM puff pieces, a writer in Fortune published “These Firms Won the Most Patents in 2016″ — a list that shows Microsoft falling down quite sharply. As a Microsoft propaganda site puts it, “Microsoft ranked 8th on the list of companies awarded with most patents in the US” (a lot lower than before).
Well, Microsoft is having issues. Software patents are getting more difficult to get, so it is not managing to keep up with patent filings. Financial issues are not helping either. In the coming years we expect IBM to become more and more like a patent troll whose actual products (if not jobs too) sailed away to China. █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Highlighting or reaffirming what they really are and whose interests they represent…
Summary: In a letter to Elodie Bergot (as CC) and Željko Topić, who faces many criminal investigations, FFPE-EPO ringleaders reveal their allegiance not to EPO staff but to those who perpetually attack the staff
SUEPO has been quiet for a long time. It is under attack from several directions in multiple EPO sites. That’s what EPO management hopes to achieve: marginsalisation and silencing, fear of even joining, not just leading the staff union.
The union-busting right-hand woman of Battistelli, Bergot, along with his right-hand ‘bulldog’ (who also did this in Croatia) received the letter above. For those who are not familiar with FFPE-EPO, here is a list of articles about them:
- In the EPO’s Official Photo Op, “Only One of the Faces is Actually FFPE-EPO”
- Further Evidence Suggests and Shows Stronger Evidence That Team Battistelli Uses FFPE-EPO as ‘Yellow Union’ Against SUEPO
- “FFPE-EPO Was Set up About 9 Years Ago With Management Encouragement”
- Fallout of the FFPE EPO MoU With Battistelli’s Circle
- The EPO’s Media Strategy at Work: Union Feuds and Group Fracturing
- Caricature of the Day: Recognising FFPE EPO
- Union Syndicale Federale Slams FFPE-EPO for Helping Abusive EPO Management by Signing a Malicious, Divisive Document
- FFPE-EPO Says MoU With Battistelli Will “Defend Employment Conditions” (Updated)
- Their Masters’ Voice (Who Block Techrights): FFPE-EPO Openly Discourages Members From Reading Techrights
- Letter Says EPO MoU “Raises Questions About FFPE’s Credibility as a Federation of Genuine Staff Unions”
- On Day of Strike FFPE-EPO Reaffirms Status as Yellow (Fake/Management-Leaning) Union, Receives ‘Gifts’
- Needed Urgently: Information About the Secret Meeting of Board 28 and Battistelli’s Yellow Union, FFPE-EPO
- In Battistelli’s Mini Union (Minion) It Takes Less Than 10 Votes to ‘Win’ an Election
- FFPE-EPO Going Ad Hominem Against FICSA, Brings Nationality Into It
- High on EPO: Battistelli’s ‘Social Conference’ Nonsense is Intended to Help Suppress Debate About His Abuses Against Staff and Union-Busting Activities
- Leaked Letter Reveals How Battistelli Still Exploits FFPE-EPO (Yellow Union) to Attack the Real EPO Union, SUEPO
- FFPE-EPO is a Zombie (if Not Dead) Yellow Union Whose Only de Facto Purpose Has Been Attacking the EPO’s Staff Union
“This bunch of FFPE clowns,” said our source, “can only produce a letter thanks to SUEPO work and expertise! P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C…
“They must hope to soon get promotions in exchange of serving the soup to their Masters at such low undignified level.”
As we mentioned about a week ago (more information about this is yet to come), VP4 has just had corruption indictments brought against him in the EU Court in Strasbourg. There are additional 6 criminal investigations against Željko Topić in Croatia.
The EPO is still rather quiet (so far this year) as people slowly return from holiday. In 2016, however, based on this new WIPR survey, EPO scandals were a hot topic. To quote:
Around one-quarter of readers also thought that the European Patent Office’s industrial disputes will play a role in 2017.
“It is amazing that the EPO industrial dispute isn’t getting more coverage,” said one reader.
The reader added that they expected “a disgruntled patentee or opponent to petition one or more national courts to ignore a decision of an EPO board of appeal on the basis that all decisions of the boards lack independence and are unenforceable”.
We already said some weeks ago (end of last year), shame on the German media for not covering it (or barely mentioning it). Even the British media, which is far from the EPO, has been doing a better job.
Yesterday our main server broke down and we had to rebuild it from scratch, which took a whole day. Later this week we shall return to regular EPO coverage. █
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